The General Welfare Clause is not about writing checks

When challenged on the federal government’s constitutional authority to create welfare programs, meddle in education or run a national healthcare system, progressives will almost always appeal to the “general welfare clause.”

Huffington Post columnist Paul Abrams demonstrated this line of thinking in a March 9, 2011, piece.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 grants the United States government the unqualified and unlimited power to raise and spend money, for example, to: provide healthcare for the elderly (or for everyone); provide old-age pension; build roads, bridges, train tracks, airports, electric grids, libraries, swimming pools, housing; educate our children, re-train the unemployed, provide pre-school and day care; fund public health projects; invest in and conduct basic research; provide subsidies for agriculture; save the auto industry; create internets (sic); and, yes, Tea Party Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), even provide emergency aid from natural disasters, and so forth. All subsumed under the authority to spend for the general welfare.

The term “general welfare” actually appears twice in the Constitution. We find it first in the preamble and then in the opening line of Article I Sec. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;

These words create something of a dilemma. Either the founders didn’t really intend to create a general government of limited powers, or the general welfare clause doesn’t really mean unlimited federal authority to do things beneficial to the nation as a whole.

The fact that the framers followed up the general welfare clause in Article I Sec. 8 with specific enumerated powers indicates the latter – a qualification on federal authority. If they had intended Congress should have the power to do virtually anything and everything to promote the general welfare, they wouldn’t have bothered to include specific powers.

James Madison made this very point in a letter to James Robertson dated April, 20, 1831.

With respect to the two words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

Yes, promoting the general welfare falls among the responsibilities of the federal government, but it must do so within the scope of the specific powers delegated.

During the ratification debates, anti-federalists who opposed the Constitution, voiced fears that people like Abrams would come along and assert that the term “general welfare” granted unlimited power to the federal government. Supporters of the Constitution swore it would not. Even Alexander Hamilton, the framer most in favor of expansive federal power, conceded as much in Federalist 83.

This specification of particulars [the 18 enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8] evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.

For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.

Madison further illuminated the intended meaning of the general welfare clause in a letter to Edmund Pendleton dated 1793, pointing out that the phrase was lifted from the Articles of Confederation and was intended to retain its meaning in the new Constitution.

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction.

So the words general welfare must mean something other than a grant of power for Congress to do whatever it pleased. What exactly did the framers mean?

Two words in the clause hold the key. General and common. The phrase simply means that any tax collected must be collected to the benefit of the United States as a whole, not for partial or sectional (i.e. special) interests. The federal government may promote the general welfare, or common good, but it must do so within the scope of the powers delegated and without favoritism.

One thought on “The General Welfare Clause is not about writing checks”

Great article,thank you. There is no legitimate excuse for misinterpreting the general welfare clause.

I think, however, one additional point should be clarified. General welfare and common defense are the two categories that the following enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8 are a part of.

The powers to declare war, raise armies, and call forth the militia are clearly common defense powers. The powers to coin money, establish post offices, and establish a patent office are general welfare.

I list them as follows: clauses 2 – 9 are general welfare, 10 – 16 are common defense, and clause 17 has some of each (land for forts, magazines, arsenals = defense).

When someone says something is authorized by the general welfare clause, I respond that I am familiar with the general welfare POWERS, as enumerated in clauses 2 – 9 and 17 of Article 1, Section 8. Which one of those powers authorizes the item they are defending?